Race is on to devise new structure

PINEHURST — The Shoshone County Emergency Medical Services Corporation (EMS Corp) announced on Tuesday that it intends to terminate its contract with Shoshone County by the end of May.

Officially presented at the Emergency Services Planning Group meeting on March 1, the EMS Corp provided the county with a 90-day notice of termination for their agreement following roughly five months of negotiations between all parties involved.

In its current form, the bulk of local ambulance services are carried out through a series of service agreements between Shoshone County, the EMS Corp, Shoshone County Fire District No. 1, Shoshone County Fire District No. 2 and neighboring counties.

Discussions between all the entities began in late 2019 regarding changes to the nature of their relationship with each other. While issues of command structure and decision making have been prevalent, the biggest issue in need of rectifying is budgetary.

The contract between Shoshone County and the EMS Corp has the county paying them $5,000 a month. In exchange, the EMS Corp has maintained the mandatory certifications necessary to operate ambulance services and performed administrative/fiscal duties such as billings, collections, record keeping, ambulance personnel training, medical supply purchasing and vehicle maintenance.

The fire districts are independent of the EMS Corp and each district has its own chief who is in-charge of their respective staff and volunteers.

Through service agreements with the EMS Corp, the two local fire districts provide ambulance response and EMT care, patient transport, and in certain cases, patient transfers.

The fiscal issue is that the EMS Corp has been operating at a loss for a while now and cannot continue to do so.

Right now, the county currently levies $86,000 to support the current system, but believes that $130,000 is probably the amount needed to maintain current operations and levels of service.

Now on a clock (the 90 days until the contract expires), the Shoshone County Board of County Commissioners plan to meet with each involved entity individually to see what their needs are and how they would like to move forward.

The most plausible and likely course of action will be to abandon the current three-entity format — County, EMS Corp and Fire Districts — and create a new EMS taxing district.

The structure of the district will be crafted by a yet-to-be named three to four-person committee comprised of experts on the matter. This committee will then present a plan (or plans) to the BOCC for selection.

It has been discussed that in this new district, the EMS Corp could be absorbed by the county or could be eliminated all together, depending on what path is chosen.

According to Idaho code, to create a taxing district, the BOCC would need to see a signed petition with a certain number of signatures and then it would need to be discussed publicly before a decision could be made.

During this planning period, Shoshone County — and some Kootenai County — residents should not worry about a drop in ambulance coverage or a decrease in quality of service.

The News-Press will continue to follow any upcoming meetings as a resolution is sought.